Fox Business Network

This is a partial transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," November 17, 2004, that was edited for clarity.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Technology heavyweight Hewlett-Packard (search) shares hitting the ball right out of the park Wednesday with its biggest gain in a couple of years, this after reporting much stronger than expected earnings, up 27 percent in the latest period.

Is it a sign that the market means business and that tech means business once again? Let us ask Carly Fiorina (search), the chairman and the CEO Of Hewlett-Packard. She joins us right now from California.

CAVUTO: Let's talk a little bit about what was going on at your company, a big turn around from folks who were disappointed a quarter ago. What changed?

FIORINA: Well, a couple of things. First we executed better. We had some very specific execution issues in the third quarter, which we were pretty open and forthright about. We said we could turn those around in the quarter, and we did.

And we also had very good demand for our products across the board. So we produced record revenues in every business in every region and very balanced profitability across the board.

CAVUTO: Indeed it was across the board. The personal computer business up three percent, commercial sales up 12 percent, consumer sales up four percent. Do you think it's looking like a good holiday?

FIORINA: Well, you know, it's interesting. A year ago, if we looked into the economy, we saw consumers quite strong and enterprise relatively weak. This year we see enterprise strengthening. I would call the consumer environment not weak, but not spectacular either. Kind of a so-so holiday season at this juncture.

CAVUTO: What is so-so year over year?

FIORINA: Well, I don't know how I could get more exact than that. A number of retailers commented in the August-September-October period that things were maybe not as strong as they had hoped.

We certainly haven't gone into the all-important Thanksgiving selling season, which is really when the Christmas season starts in earnest.

CAVUTO: Yes.

FIORINA: But I would say based on what we're seeing today, it's OK, but it's not spectacular.

CAVUTO: Are you worried, Carly, about — I guess your printer and imaging business, that was up about five percent. Correct me if I'm wrong...

FIORINA: It's up five percent, yes.

CAVUTO: All right. That's gotten to be a real commodity war. I know Dell's getting into the business. Others have these so-called no-name brands. Does it mean that the cost constraints are going to be such that your profitable margins there are going to slip-slide away?

FIORINA: Well, actually, it is not a commodity business for us, although certainly there are many low cost printers in the market. This is a very R&D and capital-intensive business, and our strategy is to continue to innovate, to stay ahead of the markets.

So in fact in this first quarter, we not only delivered record revenues in our imaging and printing business, we also delivered record profits. And at 16.6 points of operating margin in imaging and printing, that is absolutely best in class profitability performance in the industry, and we intend to continue that.

Now, as we go into the first half of '05, we may modulate our best in class profitability down a little bit, and increase our growth a little bit, but we intend to continue to remain the leader and the benchmark in this industry.

I would also just quickly add that in the fourth quarter, we delivered into the marketplace about 14 million printers. That is an all-time record in terms of hardware volume for the quarter: 5 million printers in the month of October alone.

Dell, by contrast, their plan is to do about five million in a year. And unlike some of our competitors, we don't give them away. We charge for them.

CAVUTO: Now, meanwhile, one giveaway for you, and a lot of companies that do business abroad, has been the weakening dollar. Is it fair to say that if the dollar had not been as weak as it has been, and continues to get, that you would be in a bigger pickle?

FIORINA: No. I don't think that's fair. Certainly, currency helps revenue, without a doubt. On the other hand, it pressures expenses.

I think it's also true that all of technology operates in this environment, so it doesn't particularly impact hue let Packard differently than it impacts anyone else. We do have hedging strategies that we employ.

So, all of that has to be taken into account. But in general, it is true that a weakening dollar has upside on revenue and downside pressure on expenses. But even adjusting for the effects of currency, this was a very solid growth quarter across the board, and around the world.